Interview with Al Morgan, 1986

THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
TEXAS FOLKL,IFE FESTIVAL
INTERVIEW WITH : Al Morgan
INTERVIEWER: Al Loman
DATE: August 1 , 1986
PLACE : Oral History Office , ITC
L: Mr . Morgan , Denhawken , as I recall, is near Stockdale.
M: Yes sir, i t is , it ' s five miles out of Stockdale.
L: Going which way?
M: Going south on state highway 119 towards Yorktown .
L: Towards Yorktown , okay .
toward --
It ' s not toward Pandora , it ' s
M: Well, i t 's kinda towards Pandora , then you turn off
towards Yorktown .
L: I understand . Some pretty interesting and colorful
history down there in that part of the country .
the Runge area , or goin ' towards Runge?
Is that in
M: Yes sir , Runge , and Eleanor , and the old town of
Riddleville (sp . ?) wh i ch i s now known as Gillett- ­L:
Gillett? Now, east of Gillett , is Ecleto?
M: Uh, yes it is, it's old Ecleto, yes sir. Sure was .
L: And back in the 1860's and ' 70 ' s they had a lot of
things poppin' down there , from what I've read and been
MORGAN 2
L: told by some of the oldtimers in my family.
M: Well, I can't speak with any authority on it myself,
just what I've heard. I'm not old enough myself to say what
was going on, but I 've heard the same thing as you just
stated.
L: How long have your folks been down there around
Denhawken?
M: We bought a place down there in 1968, when I was getting
r eady to retire from the Air Force.
L: I see. So you didn't grow up in that neck of the
woods.
M: No, I grew up--I was born and raised, more or less, in
the town of Burley, Idaho--
L: Burley?
M: Burley , yes sir. And I spent a lot of my time in
northern Nevada , northwestern Utah and southwestern Wyoming.
Working on cattle ranches.
L: And where did you learn the art of the farrier?
M: Well, it was kind of a have-to thing. When we started
ridin' horses on ranches, we were issued a certain number of
horses we were supposed to ride, and when you r ode him out
of that corral, he had to have shoes on. And you were the
one to put the shoes on. You were also required to carry
with you a spare front and a spare hind shoe, and equipment
to put one on if you threw a shoe out when you was workin'.
L: You said "they" required this, who are you talking
about?
M: I'm talkin' about the ranch owners and the ranch foreman-
MORGAN
M: required you to do this.
L: I see. That was just custom of the country?
M: Yes, it was customary, custom of the country.
wanted to work the place, you had to do it.
If you
L: Now you see, I grew up on a farm and ranch near San
Marcos (and still live there) and ranching traditions, I
3
suspect, out in the drier areas of the country where the
spreads were a l o t larger than they were here in central
Texas, might have had something to do with the fact that
cowboys might need to know how to shoe a horse,especially if
they find themselves seventy-five miles from the nearest
blacksmith .
M: You bet. Most of my time, from the time when I was
fourteen years old, when I went to work with the Gamble
Ranch in northeastern Nevada, I spent most of my time forty
miles from the main ranch headquarters and by myself, in
what they call the line shack, and I seen the boss every two
weeks. Other than that, I was it. Except for haying
season. Why, of course , in haying season we'd have regular
crews come out and cut and stack the hay. We didn't bale, we
stacked it. And during this period of time we usually had
anywhere from twelve to twenty-five people. But after the
haying season was over, you were by yourself out there and
you had x number of cattle to take care of, feed, water,
check, doctor, and do what you had to do. And you better
know how to take care of your horse, 'cause he was gonna
take care of ~.
L: Right, right. Okay, how old were you when you first
MORGAN
L: learned how to shoe a horse?
M: I would say--to first shoe a horse, I was about
fourteen.
L: Who taught you how to do it?
4
M: Hell , my father helped me . I g rew up with him , he was
one heck of a hand with horses. And he mor e or l ess
instructed me, a s I g r ew up , t o the n . And when I went out
to work i n different r anches , they usually had a b lacksmith
that wou l d help you , show you what you needed to do , but his
job was actually main t enance of equipment as a blacksmith .
He was not a horseshoer . So this is wher e I l earned it. I
thought I knew that I really--could shoe a horse--until in
1972 , when I started shoeing horses commercially , I met with
an o l d boy t hey used to call Cherokee Bill, an o l d ex-rodeo
cowboy champion , and a real tophand blacksmith and
horseshoer, and he showed me r eally what--I didn't know what
I was doin '. He really taught me more things than I had
ever heard of before .
L: Okay , now l et me--before we get into that , let me
backtrack t o when you were fourteen. What did you fi n d--at
that point , when you were first learning , what did you find
to be the trickiest thing that you had to master before you
could ge t the job done? Now , we 're t a lkin' about when you
we r e first l earn ing .
M: Well , probably the hardest thi ng to l earn was a li ttle
bit of self -confidence in knowing how to drive that nail and
where to drive it. Because i f you get it misplaced just a
little bit, you can cripple a horse. Also , if a horse je r ks
MORGAN
M: away when you do "quick him", as this is what it ' s
called, he can not only get hurt but he can hurt you bad.
L: Yes, he can . In a very sensitive place, too .
M: You bet. So , this is one of the trickiest things , is
learning to drive the nail.
itself.
It's kind of an art , all in
L: Mm-hm . Okay, you said you went along for, how many
5
years, shoeing horses until 1972 , when somebody came along
and--
M: Well, actually, I didn ' t shoe horses all those years. I
worked on ranches till I turned e i ghteen , and I figured
there was an easier way to make a livin'. So--
L: I wa s five years old when I learned that. (Laugh.)
M: Well , I thought it out real quick when I-- well , I'd
known it a long time. But I wasn 't able t o do anything
else. So when I turned eighteen I went into the service .
And I stayed in the service--Air Force--as a jet mechanic ,
which is quite a different thing, from ho r seshoeing to a jet
mechanic--for twenty-one years and s i x months. And then
when I retired I went to work for four or five years as a
cop, and shoein ' horses part-t ime, a nd then I went into it
commercial l y full- t ime. And that ' s when I really learned
how much I didn 't know.
L: Mm- hm . So , can you point to any specific thing that you
didn 't know until 1972 or whenever? What was it in this
l ater point in your life that you learned about shoeing
horses that you hadn't known previously? Is there anything
you can put your finger on , so to speak?
MORGAN 6
M: Yes, there's quite a few things there really, when you
come right down to it. Up until that time, I couldn't make
a shoe, up until 1972, from bare stock.
L: Okay.
M: I didn't really know the fine points of fitting a shoe
properly. I could fit one and make it work, and keep it on
the horse, but it really was not doing the horse the best
thing in the world to help him go. And also in leveling a
foot. I didn't really know the different angles that you
set a horse's foot, and the different levels that you got to
use sometimes on t he same horse for different fe et where
they have foot problems. And this is the things that I
learned after starting with this old man Uncle Bil l Thwaites
or Cherokee Bill Thwaites.
L: How do you spell that last name?
M: T-H-,v-A-I-T-E-S.
L: And where was he from? Where did you run into him?
M: Well--I ran into him in Stockdale at a service station
one time. And we just got to talkin', I've never met a
stranger in my li fe , so ... We started talkin', and he told
me what he was doin', and I said, "Well, could you use a
hand to help ya? I'd like to learn it, allover." So I
struck up a conversation with him, took him home for supper
that night, and started workin' my spare time with him. For
six years. All for fre e . And when I got finished workin'
with him, I knew how to shoe a horse.
you send down the road.
I could shoe anything
MORGAN
L: Is there any way to describe in language any of the
finer points of shoeing a horse?
7
M: Yes , it'd take a little bit of thought to get the words
all in p r oper perspective.
L: You know, you were speaking a minute ago about-I don't
think you used this term exactly, but--I assume you can put
a corrective shoe on a horse just like you can put a
corrective shoe on a child.
M: Thi s is very true, and it is required more often than
you'd realize. But a regular old country horseshoer like I
was did not realize, at that time, what you should do or
could do to help a horse. And there's very much--it's
really what you call a therape utic shoe ing. And it is to
correct a fault with a ho rse, and make him walk diffe r ent ,
or his act i ons are different from what they would normally
be under regular circumstances.
L: Could you take just one specific, let's say, the most
common problem that a horse would have, and then tell us how
that could be corrected with the shoeing? I a lways want an
e xample .
M: Well--even with horseshoers you have a lot of debate,
but I think the most common thing that you would find with
most horses, even with good horseshoers, is their toes are
too long and their heels are too low. Now to correct this,
when you trim their feet you trim the toe up real short, and
leave the heels alone, so that it stands 'em up higher at a
different angle. Now you try to stand the foot so that the
foot leve l and his pasturin' angle-when he's standing on it-
MORGAN 8
M: will have approximately the same angle as his shoulder
angle is, which is approximately 52 degrees from level.
L: How in the hel l do you determine t hat, you know, at what
l evel--these levels?
M: Most of the time--if you ' re talking about determining
the shoulder level--you do have a protractor , which would be
a large protractor , that you can use to get it exactly
right. And you measure it against the ? and up
along his shoulder angle . Now a l o t of horses won 't stand for
this so you have to just kinda go by your eye. But about
ninety-five percent of the horses will have or require a 52
degree angle on t hei r feet. And this is t hrough shoeing
thousands and thousands of horses, not just myself but all
the other farriers in the country , have determined that this
is the proper angle that most of the horses stand, because
we did measure so many of them. And if they're one degree
off, most people can see it, if they are rea l experienced at
it. You can see the big difference. It'll eiher be a steep
angle or a longer slope . And consequently you can adjust
the shoe or the foot to match the shoulder angle.
L: I think what I'm wondering is, how do you get a live
animal, perhaps one not accustomed to standing perfectly
still, and especially one that might be a little
high-strung, to stand still long enough to take a
measurement? What kind of instrument-do you literally use a
level with a bubble in it and all this?
M: You use a level with a bubble on it on the ground
surface, and you actually make a protractor, which is an
MORGAN 9
M: extended--the same thing you use in school for checking
angles in mathematics. And it's got a hinge on the end,
it's a variable protractor, and you can get the angle
readings . And this is what you use. And--
L: You can refine that to within one degree.
M: You can refine it to within one degree, or even less
than one degree. You can get it down to within a quarter o f
a degree. And this must be kind of exaggerating in some
points, but this angle that you got here, and the protractor
you have, you're talking about a six foot long protractor.
And you can get it real fine. So you can get it right down
to, what you might say, the gnat 's wing . Real fine.
L: Or some other part of the gnat's anatomy.
M: Mmmmh!
L: Has anybody, to your knowledge, ever written a good ,
comprehensive book on horseshoeing? Could it be done?
M: Yes, it has been done , and it is being done. There are
several of them out , and one of the best is by the man who
owns and operates the Oklahome Farrier's College. His name
is Bud Beeston . And he ' s located up just above Tulsa,
Oklahoma. Little town of Sperry, Oklahoma.
L: Is Sperry where the school is--
M: Yes sir.
L: Yeah, seems to me that school got some national
publicity here on one of the network news programs, a couple
or three or four years ago or something .
M: Yes sir. Well, they've done a lot of experimental work
up there, working with vets. And, well, I work with vets
MORGAN 10
M: myself and we do a lot of experimental work, but we
don't get the national publicity like he does. Or really
you might say international .. Because I 'm not as big as he
is, I don 't have a school . And we don't really care if we
get that kind of publicity or not. But they've taken
horses' legs off, at the knee or below the knee in the hock,
or at the hock or at the front lock(?) joint, and put a peg
leg on him, and make him go! With proper equipment and
harness, it's just like a person with an artificial leg.
L: Mmm-hm .
M: And this is some of the things that we've done in the
past, oh , ten years or so , that we wouldn't have done twenty
years ago--they would have just taken a horse out and shot
him! But we ' ve save a lot of highbred horses by doing this
kind of thing , and used 'em for breeding purposes. So we
prolong their--not only their lives, but also their
bloodline . And this is the reason we've done this .
L: ~IDm - hm, hm-hm. Now you're located down there in
Stockdale, by Denhawken. Where does most of your clientele
come from now? ' Cause after all, you know, old Cousin
Johnny Vinyard quit plowin' behind mules in 1942 and bought
himself a Farmall tractor, and a John Deere--first one he
ever owned , when he was sixty- two years old. To give you
a--
M: That's very true on all of it.
L: But, uh, where do you find your clientele now?
M: Well, I never really worry about it-- the clientele
finds me. Lot of the vets that I do work with, will either
MORGAN 11
M: call me if they have a special horse , a special job
needs to be done , or people ask them where they can get a
horseshoer--they usually r ecommend me and give them my
number, and so forth. I've never actively gone out looking
for clients, but there's no problem. Right now in this day
and age, there's more horses in the world and in this United
States than there was a hundred years ago . Now I know that
people don't use 'em--
L: More and more horses but not mules. (Laugh. )
M: We ll, there's more mules too and mules are mak i ng a big
comeback! They 're gettin' more popular!
L: Well I know that to be true.
M: That's a differnt subject altogether .
L : Yeah , I know-- I don 't want to ? (Laugh. )
M: Uh, mules , they're usin' them for dressage--I'm talking'
about mules. They ' re usin' 'em for hunter jumpers , they're
usin ' 'em for pack strings, of course we knew this-- they're
racing them-- and a good , fast racing mule will run the
socks off my quarter horse . And this is a fact. On a short
race they 'll run the socks off my quarter horse. I've shod
two or three good ones . I n fact, I was shoeing the national
winning racing champion mule , for about six years, of the
United States, and he was one thing-- something else. But he
was also the world champion kicker . I could stand up there
by his head and he could take my hat off with a hind
foot--they can kick in any direction.
L: Yes , they can.
MORGAN 12
M: But to get back to the horses-- people are riding horses
more than what they did fifty years ago , or twenty years
ago , or ten years ago . And you have your trail ride people;
and you have your people that, believe it or not, use horses
as a prestige thing .
L : Oh, yeah.
M: Just like a Cadillac or a Mark IV.
L: Yeah , or collecting paintings or something like that.
M: You bet. So this is where my clientele comes from.
L: You're not all that far from Goliad, and Goliad does
have a race track, doesn ' t it?
M: Goliad has a race track, and there is a race track in
Seguin, which I don't know if you knew about. There's a lot
of little brush country race tracks around that nobody's
supposed to know about--
L: (Laugh.) I even know about a dog- racing' track over
there , close to Belmont , south of Belmont, too .
M: We used to race in La Vernia, right there behind the
Chamber of Commerce hall. And they kinda closed that down
because it got to be too much of a hassle, too many people
drinkin' and gettin' in trouble over there, and everything,
so we kinda shut it down. But we've done some racin' over
there, in fact we've got two horses that raced the first, I
guess the first three years over there, and one of 'em was
only beat once. The other one never was beat . But they're
little match races , and l ittle country type races, you know,
brush track, and it ' s a lot of fun , but , you can get some
pretty stiff competition.
MORGAN 13
L: Now let ' s talk about competition, though, right there in
you own profession. Do you have a lot of competition? Are
there a lot of other farriers around? Is the profession
coming back , so to speak? Do you find many young people
getting into it these days?
M: Yes , we do have a lot of competition , and that ' s what
makes the thing--the improvements we've got to do, and
things we aren't doing . We have a Texas Professional
Farriers Association, or in short we call it the TPFA, and
we have listed 300 and I t hink 86 members in the state of
Texas in our association. Now these people we classify as
farriers, and not horseshoers. We probably have five times
as many horseshoers , which are not listed with us, and not
part of us, although they are in the profession .
L: Now I think I could probably figure out the difference
between a horseshoer and a farrier, but do you want to tell
me?
M: Yes, I'd love to tell you. A horseshoer i s anybody who
can take a set of tools--a hammer, an old rasp , or even a
new rasp, a pair of nippers, and nails, and go out and nail
some shoes on an old horse. Whether they're on right, or
not, it doesn't make any difference--he's still a
horseshoer . ' Cause he shoes horses. A farrier is-kinda
comparin' to him, well, he's a professional. And he takes
pride in his work . . He can make any shoe, or any leg brace,
or any modification that is required,to make the horse go
and to go right. He can take a crippled horse, and he can
work on him, and build whatever needs to be done, and help
MORGAN 14
M: the horse. Comparing a horseshoer and a farrier is like
compar i ng a general practitioner in the medical profession
to a podiatrist. So, the horseshoer knows what he's doin '
sometimes, sometimes he don't. And you've got some darn
good horseshoers. But they do not make--they still-- do
what they need to do at times.
L: If you're--along the r oad t o becoming a farrier , do
farriers-- tell me a little bit about their training that
they git up there at that school in Sperry, Oklahoma, for
example. What's the curriclum? What do they study? Do
they study horse anatomy--muscles, ligaments, you know,
things of this nature?
M: You'd study a lot on the feet and the legs of an animal,
and I mean thoroughly. You dissect the leg of a dead horse,
both front and rear, to see just exactly what that is made
up of , and all the muscles, and ligaments, tendons, and all,
are connected and interconnected, and all of the joints.
And you dig into that thing and you'll go through it, just
right to the very last thing. You learn everything about
that horse in his foot. But you also-­L:
You--oh, go ahead , go ahead.
M: You also study the overall anatomy of a horse. From his
head to his tail, and from the bottom of his feet t o the top
of his back. So you can balance him out, you can do
whatever you need to. Yes sir. You study every bit of him.
L: Did you have that kind of a thing yourself? I sorta
gather that you didn't.
M: I did not, no. I--
MORGAN 15
L: So actually you had a somewhat harder row to hoe, didn't
you, to get it down--
M: Yes, I did. Well--I'll put it this way--I did study
that, but I got mine when I was shoeing with this Bill
Thwaites , that I spoke of earlier, and reading from a
book--which you asked if a book had been written, and
there's been several of 'em, and I've studied several of
' em , I probably have the best libra ry on farriery in the
state of Texas.
L: Well , give me a couple of titles that you think are
right up there at the top.
M: All right, Doug Butler's Practical Horseshoeing. He was
a professor in the University of Missouri at one time, and I
believe he is now in Oregon teaching. And we have Bud
Beeston's Master Farrier. There's another one from out in
Tennessee, and he and his wife both teach horseshoeing as
well as doing horseshoeing, and I--his name is Canfield, I
want to say Dale or Dan Canfield. And their's is some of
the better ones that we've had to study. I' ve got seven or
eight other books, but right off the top of my head I
couldn't say which title went to which author. And I would
hate to get 'em tangled up.
L: Yeah, I understand. I may be taking you down a
sidetrack here, but did you ever read or have occasion to
look at Doc Green (?), Ben K. Green's book on horse
conformation?
M: (Laugh. ) Yes, I have. I didn't get a chance to read
it, I got a chance to glance through it. And I think he's-
MORGAN
M: he's a great author. He's real great.
L: He was a hell of a bullshit artist.
M: (Laugh.)
16
L: But I was wondering, you know what an experienced--what
an old pro like yourself would think of his ideas and
notions.
M: Well, I'll put it this way. I think his ideas and
nature--if you'll dissect what he's saying, and really take
all the, as you put it, bullshit, out of it, he is pretty
darn close to bein' just about right. But he's got a knack
of putting it where it is not only a real good technical
book, but it is a fascinating book t o read. Now I didn't
get to read the whole thing, like I said, but I'm goin' to
one of these days. What I have read, it just tickles you,
and really makes it interesting. He kinda reminds me
of--the same type of writing is done by another vet, from
over in Scotland, I believe it was, the author of-- All
Animals (Creatures] Large and Small?
L: Yeah--Herriot, wasn't it?
M: Herriot, yes.
L: James He rriot. And he's written several books. And he's
got the knack of really makin' a book interesting and
really, I hate to set it down.
L: Mmm-hmm. I think probably one of the greatest of the
authors on animal life and on, you know, reacting toward
animals as having personalities of their own, which of
course many of them do, is a British zoologist named Gerald
Durrell, and if you ever have a chance to read any of his
MORGAN
L: books, they're wonderful, and they're well -written,
tremendously good humor in it, and just thoroughly
enjoyable, whether you're interested in animals or not.
M: Great . Great. Oh, I love to read. I'd sooner read
than I would watch TV--
L: Oh, my--yeah , myself.
M: --Unless we have some special I like, like we 're
puttin' on here.
L: Right.
M: I like good western music , or good band music , or
something like that, or a real good , live type wildlife
show, or something like this.
L: Well , do you--how much association , you know , do you
have with other farriers in the state? Texas is a big
state. But, you know , how many far riers are we talking
about within the state of TExas?
M: Actual farriers?
L: Farriers , and not horseshoers, and of course 1-­M:
Actual farriers in the state--I would say there's
probably pretty close to 600.
L: How many were there ten years ago?
M: Te n years ago? Probably 200, at the most.
L: Well I'll be damn . Would you hazard to guess about
twenty years ago?
M: Twenty years ago I'd probably say there was not more
than twenty-five in the whole state.
L: Okay , so--
17
t10RGAN 18
M: We have really upgraded--this is one reason why we
formed our association . Now the horseshoers have probably
stayed at the same level for the past twenty years, as far
as numbers go. Because you're gonna have horseshoers--and
some will shoe ' em for a while and then they'll quit.
They'll find out how hard it is, you know. It looks easy
when you see someone else doin' it. But he gets out there
and gets under a horse , he finds out --hey , that old horse is
a heavy rascal when he wants to l ay on you, and he can be a
fractious outfit , too, you know. So, you can get hurt,
really easy,real quick , and you can get tired out and mad
quicker than that. So they figure that is an easy way to
make a living. But I feel this way , and a lot of us do ,
that whatever you enjoy doin', I don't care what it is, it's
not hard. You know. If you enjoy doing it. But we got
together and formed our assoc iation , and we upgraded a l ot
of good plain common horseshoers, and a lot of kids that was
wantin' to get started, we've taken them before they
developed any bad habits, and we've taught them the proper
way of doing things. And by doing this--by getting
together--now, we usually get together about once every
month or every two months, most of us in the state. Now we
don't all get together at the same time, there's no way.
We've got people in Lubbock, Texas, and Amarillo, and all
the way around the state. We do manage to try--a bunch of
us get together and have an association meeting about once a
month.
MORGAN 19
L: Where do you f ind the biggest concentration of farriers
in the state of Texas? Or are they just evenly distributed?
M: No, they're not real evenly distributed . Now you find
concentrations around every large city in the state, like
here in San Antonio. Here in San Antonio, I believe we--at
last count , there's about twenty to twenty-five farriers and
probably a hundred and fifty horseshoers, right here in the
San Antonio area.
L: But they're not out--they're not out in the country,
they're here--
M: Now those are in the cities where you have your big
stables. Where you can go and make one set up, and do
anywheres from five to fifteen horses a day, and you don't
have to drive allover the countr y to do it. And most of
' ern are located around large cities where they do have these
stables where the horses are concentrated. Now I bought(?)
out there in the country before I started shoein' horses,
and I ? in the same thing. But I used to
drive there, I covered--ten years ago. I (used to drive?)
the horses all the way from Corpus Christi to Austin , and
from Victoria all the way to Uvalde. Now we didn ' t have
enough horseshoers to cover those areas, which we do now.
So this area I covered when I was young. I was on the road
an awful l ot. Then I decided, well, it really is not worth
my time to be on the road that much, when I can make a
livin' right there around horne, and do just as good. And
doing better , really. I don't like to spend many nights on
the road, or anything like this.
MORGAN 20
L: Sure .
M: But we have got these other farriers , and a lot of the
horseshoers , are learning too. And the larger cities has a
big concentration, but the small towns-usually, well, the
closest competition as far as real competition t o me
goes--I've got one in Floresville nineteen miles away . I
have another one in Yorktown that's thirty-three miles away,
and there's another one over in Leesville which is a small
little community like Denhawken--
L: I know exacty where Leesville is.
M: Well , like I say , it's a little small community about
like Denhawken. And that's my closest competition . And in
between each of those people and me , there's probably three
hundred horses in each direction between me and them. And I
don 't try to do three hundred horses a month, or every six
weeks , which is what you should do, is every six weeks .
'Cause I can't handle that many.
tnat many.
I don't want to handle
L: You're going to inevitably learn a hell of a lot of
animal psychology and you're gonna learn it quick, when
you're--
M: Either that or you 'll quit.
L: You'll quit, or you gonna wind up, you know, with l ots
of broken bones. What kind of animal--I'm not sure this
question's gonna work but I'll try it anyway--what kind of
anima l have you learned to recognize as being one that's
gonna give you trouble, you know, almost the instant you
spot him?
MORGAN 21
M: Well , suprisingly, you can tell which animals are gonna
give you the trouble ninety-eight percent of the time. Now
sometimes you can get fooled .
L: Yeah , yeah.
M: But-it' s just t he way he stands. He stands kinda like
he ' s on guard or something. You yourself have walked up to
a dog a nd known that that dog , if he had a chance, is gonna
get ya. Just the way he stands and the way he watches ya.
And a horse is the same way. He's gonna get ya if he gits a
chance. And you just learn to recognize the sign language
that he puts out . ' Cause he's tellin' ya, even though he's
not sayin' anyth ing and not making any overt moves , just the
way he stands there and watches you lets you know that ,
hey , you better be real careful , and he ' ll get ya if he can.
So exactly how to put it in words , I don't really know,
except just watch 'em.
And they'll git ya.
' Cause he's gonna be watchin ' you!
L: You referred a litt l e bit ago to , you know, the proper
positioning of the shoe, you know, for therapeutic--you
know , similar you ' re mounting a shoe for say, some
therapeutic purpose , or corrective purpose , or whatever.
Does the reaction of the animal then tell you whether or not
you 're doing it right as you proceed with the operation?
M: Well . the action's before . You study a horse in his
different modes of travel and the way he stands, before you
ever start to work. Now in the field, i f you're just out
shoeing a horse, normally somebody will lead him to ya, and
after you've shod several hundred of 'em, you can see what
MORGAN 22
M: you think might be needed. Now he may need something
different. It's--sometimes, in a way it 's a trial and error
thing to get it exactly right . But--
L: That doesn 't help the horse's disposition or yours to
have to--
M: Well , yes, it does , because a lot of horses--the way you
approach 'ern and everything--Now, I can say this truthfully,
and maybe I'm being ' a little bit proud , but I think
rightfully so, but I have shod horses that some of the
horseshoers or farriers couldn't even walk up to. And had
no trouble with 'ern. So the way you approach ' ern , is--to-­just,
a whole lot of the old thing, as far as that goes , but
also knowing what you 're going to do , beforehand . If he's
walkin', now, just for example , if you watched a horse
walk--now we call it ringin' or paddlin'--they pick a foot
up and it'll swing to the outside , and kinda swing in a
circle, and then set it down. Where instead of breakin'
straight forward, over the toe and moving in a straight
line--well, this is paddling. Well, you 've got to correct
it. And this is why I say, it's a trial and error thing to
correct this, because what works on one won't work on the
next one, maybe. And you've got to be able to adjust the
way the shoe fits. You might even have to make a
side-weighted shoe , special, to transfer the weight on one
side of his foot or the other. And what works on the hind
foot works on the opposite side on the front foot ,
sometimes. But you know where you're goin', and what you
want to do, but it's a kind of a trial and error thing to
MORGAN 23
M: make sure that it is doing exactly what you need for it
to do .
L: One very important question that I forgot to ask here , a
few minutes ago . Does every farrier routinely make his own
shoes from scratch, so to speak , or does he buy those that
are pre - cast , or whatever the term is?
M: Well , this kinda depends on your cl i entele also. Most of
us use what they call a factory keg(?) shoe . The reason
being , that we do have to cha r ge more for handmade shoes ,
because it takes a longer time, and you ' ve got a whole lot
more-not only effort , but also money t i ed up, in your-well
we use gas forges , or we 'l l use coa l forges , and you got
more money tied up i n your equiment . It takes special
equipment . So we do have to charge more , and it does take
more time , although they get a better fin ished product . And
a l ot of people can 't understand t h is, and they say , "Well ,
good lord, you- you're chargin ' too much." Wh i ch I can
understand this, t oo , I 've been on both sides . And most of
us do most of our shoeing with keg shoes . We do all of our
therapeutic shoeing with handmade shoes , handmade braces . I
shoe all my own horses , and we have nine of them , with all
handmade shoes .
(Laugh. )
L: Mm- hmm .
So , we got some horses with problems too.
M: Almost every horse you ' ll come across will have some
kind of a problem that a handmade shoe can improve him.
Almost all of them. There ' s no perfec t foot on a horse.
MORGAN 24
M: So, consequently that's why you put shoes on--if you had
a perfect foot, you wouldn't have to put shoes on 'em.
L: Yeah. I was thinkin' they probably spent a lot of time
on some mighty rough terrain, perhaps.
M: Well, if it's mighty rough, they're gonna break their
feet down, and still it's not a perfect foot. So, it'll
wear it out and break it off, and chip and split. So still
it's not a perfect foot. About the nearest thing I could
say to a perfect foot any horse ever had, and this is only
my opinion and several other people I've talked to, quite a
few of 'em horseshoers--is the old . line of the original
Appaloosa horses. They had the toughest feet in the world.
And they wore like iron. And that's one reason why the
Indians didn't have t o shoe their horses very much. They
just had a tougher foot.
L: Okay. Frances Haynes(sp?) many years ago wrote a book
on the Appaloosa, published by University of Oklahoma, sort
of a classic reference in its field. One of these days I'll
have to get that book and read it and see if he alludes to
this.
M: (Laugh.)
L: Professor Hayes might have, you know, might have missed
something there. How many of these Folklife Festivals have
you participated in?
M: This is my fifth one.
L: Your fifth one.
M: Yes sir. And I've enjoyed each one of 'em more every
year. I'll be here as long as ya'll have me back. (Laugh.)
MORGAN 25
L: (Laugh .) Well, that might be quite a while--you seem to
draw a crowd out there.
M: Well, we certainly try, we try to put on a demonstration
that people can see what we're doing , and they can
understand and see what their grandfathers or uncles or
daddies or--some people-- almost all people had a blacksmith
somewhere down the line in the family , when you hear 'em
talkin!
L: That's right.
M: But they are all interested, and we do try to put on a
real good demonstration for them. The people I've got with
me and have had with me are some of the best blacksmiths in
the state, artistic-wise and utility-wise , and they 're kinda
new to the game of demonstration in public and doin' a lot
of talking, which--I 've got one whose a real bullshit
artist, and this is great--he's a good blacksmith.
L: (Laugh . ) I think I know--I think I met him .
M: Yes, that was John Robie(sp.?) down there. And he is
real good--he ' s a good blacksmith. But he just has a gi ft
of gab--and this is part of demonstratin '--i f you don't have
it, you can get out there an ' hammer all day long, if you
don't say nothing, you know, you're not gonna have much
people there to--
L: You're not gonna have any feedback, no response.
M: Right.
L: Where are these other folks from, that are with your
group?
M: John Robie(sp .?) is here locally. He works for Voss Metal
MORGAN 26
M: Works , in t he south part of San Antonio . Mike ?
is out here. In Converse , has his own b lacksmith shop and
works full time in it. Norma Clark , the lady blacksmith, is
up in Spring Branch. And she is actually a lady farrier, or
a lady horseshoer , whichever you want t o call here--she
calls herself a horseshoer, I'd say she's a farrier. She is
a good horseshoer and farrier. She's not as good as some of
'em but then, hey, she's a lady. I wouldn't compare her
work with mine, no. Or with anybody else that I classify as
a top line farrier. But she is above the horseshoer level,
and she's right in the , what I would call, the intermediate
range of the farrier class. So, that's what I call her. I
have another man out here who came in this evening , Gary
Fields. Now he is a CPA out here at Kelly Field for the
commissary . And he does a lot of part-time blacksmithing at
home, and he's more or less just trying to learn. I have
several other people that do come in and out of my booth
almost every year , that--they 're horseshoers , and do a
little blacksmithin' out--hobby type stuff, and they come in
to learn and to visit and to have a good time and get in my
fire, and just enjoy themselves. This what I call part of
the demonstrating, is getting them in the fire too and l et
them do somethig.
L: Right. Right.
M: So that's why I do have some of the people I've got
here . Now something that most people don't know and I found
out here yesterday, Mike Jacik(sp . ?) right there where we ' re
working--that big pecan tree, right out, just outside the
MORGAN
M: fence-­L:
Mm-hmm.
27
M: That pecan tree was one he played on when he was a kid
growing up. It was in his mother's backyard--grandmother's
backyard! And so , this has a big significance for him.
L: (Laugh.) Mm-hmm.
M: Several years ago he was not a blacksmith but he was a
metalworker, and he came in and I got him in the fire, and
he took a vacation that year and he went to New Mexico. And
he went to Frank Turley's forge in New Mexico and learned to
be a blacksmith.
L: Okay , I know about Frank Turley , and a friend of mine
named Marc Simmons , who is himself a farrier out in
Cerrillos, New Mexico- - wrote a book with Frank Turley here a
couple years ago , four or five years ago--
M: ' Bout five years ago .
L: --Published by University of New Mexico- - by the Museum
of--it' s the--why am I having memory failure here? The
Museum of New Mexico.
11: Santa Fe, New Mexico.
L: Santa Fe, yeah. Turley and Marc Simmons collaborated on
this book. And
M: They've got a fine book out. Marc-­L
: Yeah , I've got it.
M: You have it? You must be fortunate . I couldn't get one.
L: Yes, it's out of print. Now I think maybe they've got
it in paperback . But I obviously get the hardback.
Simmons is a very unusual man . Ph.D. in history, I believe
MORGAN 28
L : from the University of Texas , teaches at the Un i versity
of New Mexi co- -uh , has wr i tten fourteen or fifteen books on,
you know , everything from the Spanish Colonial government of
New Mexico in the seventeenth century , to books about , you
know- -
M: Farrier y .
L : Farriery .
M: Blacksmithing .
L : Okay . All right, I was wondering- -
M: How much more diversified can you get?
L : I was wondering what the word was. Farriery .
M: Yes .
L: Thought sure it couldn ' t be " farriering".
M: (Laugh.) What word is that? It ' s your words, your
voice. (Laugh. ) You say what you want .
L: ( Laugh . ) Well , "ferrying ", though , is what George
Washington did across the Delaware .
M: but I--you know , talking of such (a thi ng?) like this, a
few years ago-- Now we had a little ole newspaper that goes
(with the) American Farrier ' s Assoc i ation, which was, (so
happened?)national--and we ' re going international , by the
way--but we had a little magazine , or a little paper out,
and they would ask a sixth grade class in California , of
kids, "What is a farrier? "
L: Laugh .
M: Well , here are some of the answers .
male fairy."
"A farrier is a
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THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
TEXAS FOLKL,IFE FESTIVAL
INTERVIEW WITH : Al Morgan
INTERVIEWER: Al Loman
DATE: August 1 , 1986
PLACE : Oral History Office , ITC
L: Mr . Morgan , Denhawken , as I recall, is near Stockdale.
M: Yes sir, i t is , it ' s five miles out of Stockdale.
L: Going which way?
M: Going south on state highway 119 towards Yorktown .
L: Towards Yorktown , okay .
toward --
It ' s not toward Pandora , it ' s
M: Well, i t 's kinda towards Pandora , then you turn off
towards Yorktown .
L: I understand . Some pretty interesting and colorful
history down there in that part of the country .
the Runge area , or goin ' towards Runge?
Is that in
M: Yes sir , Runge , and Eleanor , and the old town of
Riddleville (sp . ?) wh i ch i s now known as Gillett- ­L:
Gillett? Now, east of Gillett , is Ecleto?
M: Uh, yes it is, it's old Ecleto, yes sir. Sure was .
L: And back in the 1860's and ' 70 ' s they had a lot of
things poppin' down there , from what I've read and been
MORGAN 2
L: told by some of the oldtimers in my family.
M: Well, I can't speak with any authority on it myself,
just what I've heard. I'm not old enough myself to say what
was going on, but I 've heard the same thing as you just
stated.
L: How long have your folks been down there around
Denhawken?
M: We bought a place down there in 1968, when I was getting
r eady to retire from the Air Force.
L: I see. So you didn't grow up in that neck of the
woods.
M: No, I grew up--I was born and raised, more or less, in
the town of Burley, Idaho--
L: Burley?
M: Burley , yes sir. And I spent a lot of my time in
northern Nevada , northwestern Utah and southwestern Wyoming.
Working on cattle ranches.
L: And where did you learn the art of the farrier?
M: Well, it was kind of a have-to thing. When we started
ridin' horses on ranches, we were issued a certain number of
horses we were supposed to ride, and when you r ode him out
of that corral, he had to have shoes on. And you were the
one to put the shoes on. You were also required to carry
with you a spare front and a spare hind shoe, and equipment
to put one on if you threw a shoe out when you was workin'.
L: You said "they" required this, who are you talking
about?
M: I'm talkin' about the ranch owners and the ranch foreman-
MORGAN
M: required you to do this.
L: I see. That was just custom of the country?
M: Yes, it was customary, custom of the country.
wanted to work the place, you had to do it.
If you
L: Now you see, I grew up on a farm and ranch near San
Marcos (and still live there) and ranching traditions, I
3
suspect, out in the drier areas of the country where the
spreads were a l o t larger than they were here in central
Texas, might have had something to do with the fact that
cowboys might need to know how to shoe a horse,especially if
they find themselves seventy-five miles from the nearest
blacksmith .
M: You bet. Most of my time, from the time when I was
fourteen years old, when I went to work with the Gamble
Ranch in northeastern Nevada, I spent most of my time forty
miles from the main ranch headquarters and by myself, in
what they call the line shack, and I seen the boss every two
weeks. Other than that, I was it. Except for haying
season. Why, of course , in haying season we'd have regular
crews come out and cut and stack the hay. We didn't bale, we
stacked it. And during this period of time we usually had
anywhere from twelve to twenty-five people. But after the
haying season was over, you were by yourself out there and
you had x number of cattle to take care of, feed, water,
check, doctor, and do what you had to do. And you better
know how to take care of your horse, 'cause he was gonna
take care of ~.
L: Right, right. Okay, how old were you when you first
MORGAN
L: learned how to shoe a horse?
M: I would say--to first shoe a horse, I was about
fourteen.
L: Who taught you how to do it?
4
M: Hell , my father helped me . I g rew up with him , he was
one heck of a hand with horses. And he mor e or l ess
instructed me, a s I g r ew up , t o the n . And when I went out
to work i n different r anches , they usually had a b lacksmith
that wou l d help you , show you what you needed to do , but his
job was actually main t enance of equipment as a blacksmith .
He was not a horseshoer . So this is wher e I l earned it. I
thought I knew that I really--could shoe a horse--until in
1972 , when I started shoeing horses commercially , I met with
an o l d boy t hey used to call Cherokee Bill, an o l d ex-rodeo
cowboy champion , and a real tophand blacksmith and
horseshoer, and he showed me r eally what--I didn't know what
I was doin '. He really taught me more things than I had
ever heard of before .
L: Okay , now l et me--before we get into that , let me
backtrack t o when you were fourteen. What did you fi n d--at
that point , when you were first learning , what did you find
to be the trickiest thing that you had to master before you
could ge t the job done? Now , we 're t a lkin' about when you
we r e first l earn ing .
M: Well , probably the hardest thi ng to l earn was a li ttle
bit of self -confidence in knowing how to drive that nail and
where to drive it. Because i f you get it misplaced just a
little bit, you can cripple a horse. Also , if a horse je r ks
MORGAN
M: away when you do "quick him", as this is what it ' s
called, he can not only get hurt but he can hurt you bad.
L: Yes, he can . In a very sensitive place, too .
M: You bet. So , this is one of the trickiest things , is
learning to drive the nail.
itself.
It's kind of an art , all in
L: Mm-hm . Okay, you said you went along for, how many
5
years, shoeing horses until 1972 , when somebody came along
and--
M: Well, actually, I didn ' t shoe horses all those years. I
worked on ranches till I turned e i ghteen , and I figured
there was an easier way to make a livin'. So--
L: I wa s five years old when I learned that. (Laugh.)
M: Well , I thought it out real quick when I-- well , I'd
known it a long time. But I wasn 't able t o do anything
else. So when I turned eighteen I went into the service .
And I stayed in the service--Air Force--as a jet mechanic ,
which is quite a different thing, from ho r seshoeing to a jet
mechanic--for twenty-one years and s i x months. And then
when I retired I went to work for four or five years as a
cop, and shoein ' horses part-t ime, a nd then I went into it
commercial l y full- t ime. And that ' s when I really learned
how much I didn 't know.
L: Mm- hm . So , can you point to any specific thing that you
didn 't know until 1972 or whenever? What was it in this
l ater point in your life that you learned about shoeing
horses that you hadn't known previously? Is there anything
you can put your finger on , so to speak?
MORGAN 6
M: Yes, there's quite a few things there really, when you
come right down to it. Up until that time, I couldn't make
a shoe, up until 1972, from bare stock.
L: Okay.
M: I didn't really know the fine points of fitting a shoe
properly. I could fit one and make it work, and keep it on
the horse, but it really was not doing the horse the best
thing in the world to help him go. And also in leveling a
foot. I didn't really know the different angles that you
set a horse's foot, and the different levels that you got to
use sometimes on t he same horse for different fe et where
they have foot problems. And this is the things that I
learned after starting with this old man Uncle Bil l Thwaites
or Cherokee Bill Thwaites.
L: How do you spell that last name?
M: T-H-,v-A-I-T-E-S.
L: And where was he from? Where did you run into him?
M: Well--I ran into him in Stockdale at a service station
one time. And we just got to talkin', I've never met a
stranger in my li fe , so ... We started talkin', and he told
me what he was doin', and I said, "Well, could you use a
hand to help ya? I'd like to learn it, allover." So I
struck up a conversation with him, took him home for supper
that night, and started workin' my spare time with him. For
six years. All for fre e . And when I got finished workin'
with him, I knew how to shoe a horse.
you send down the road.
I could shoe anything
MORGAN
L: Is there any way to describe in language any of the
finer points of shoeing a horse?
7
M: Yes , it'd take a little bit of thought to get the words
all in p r oper perspective.
L: You know, you were speaking a minute ago about-I don't
think you used this term exactly, but--I assume you can put
a corrective shoe on a horse just like you can put a
corrective shoe on a child.
M: Thi s is very true, and it is required more often than
you'd realize. But a regular old country horseshoer like I
was did not realize, at that time, what you should do or
could do to help a horse. And there's very much--it's
really what you call a therape utic shoe ing. And it is to
correct a fault with a ho rse, and make him walk diffe r ent ,
or his act i ons are different from what they would normally
be under regular circumstances.
L: Could you take just one specific, let's say, the most
common problem that a horse would have, and then tell us how
that could be corrected with the shoeing? I a lways want an
e xample .
M: Well--even with horseshoers you have a lot of debate,
but I think the most common thing that you would find with
most horses, even with good horseshoers, is their toes are
too long and their heels are too low. Now to correct this,
when you trim their feet you trim the toe up real short, and
leave the heels alone, so that it stands 'em up higher at a
different angle. Now you try to stand the foot so that the
foot leve l and his pasturin' angle-when he's standing on it-
MORGAN 8
M: will have approximately the same angle as his shoulder
angle is, which is approximately 52 degrees from level.
L: How in the hel l do you determine t hat, you know, at what
l evel--these levels?
M: Most of the time--if you ' re talking about determining
the shoulder level--you do have a protractor , which would be
a large protractor , that you can use to get it exactly
right. And you measure it against the ? and up
along his shoulder angle . Now a l o t of horses won 't stand for
this so you have to just kinda go by your eye. But about
ninety-five percent of the horses will have or require a 52
degree angle on t hei r feet. And this is t hrough shoeing
thousands and thousands of horses, not just myself but all
the other farriers in the country , have determined that this
is the proper angle that most of the horses stand, because
we did measure so many of them. And if they're one degree
off, most people can see it, if they are rea l experienced at
it. You can see the big difference. It'll eiher be a steep
angle or a longer slope . And consequently you can adjust
the shoe or the foot to match the shoulder angle.
L: I think what I'm wondering is, how do you get a live
animal, perhaps one not accustomed to standing perfectly
still, and especially one that might be a little
high-strung, to stand still long enough to take a
measurement? What kind of instrument-do you literally use a
level with a bubble in it and all this?
M: You use a level with a bubble on it on the ground
surface, and you actually make a protractor, which is an
MORGAN 9
M: extended--the same thing you use in school for checking
angles in mathematics. And it's got a hinge on the end,
it's a variable protractor, and you can get the angle
readings . And this is what you use. And--
L: You can refine that to within one degree.
M: You can refine it to within one degree, or even less
than one degree. You can get it down to within a quarter o f
a degree. And this must be kind of exaggerating in some
points, but this angle that you got here, and the protractor
you have, you're talking about a six foot long protractor.
And you can get it real fine. So you can get it right down
to, what you might say, the gnat 's wing . Real fine.
L: Or some other part of the gnat's anatomy.
M: Mmmmh!
L: Has anybody, to your knowledge, ever written a good ,
comprehensive book on horseshoeing? Could it be done?
M: Yes, it has been done , and it is being done. There are
several of them out , and one of the best is by the man who
owns and operates the Oklahome Farrier's College. His name
is Bud Beeston . And he ' s located up just above Tulsa,
Oklahoma. Little town of Sperry, Oklahoma.
L: Is Sperry where the school is--
M: Yes sir.
L: Yeah, seems to me that school got some national
publicity here on one of the network news programs, a couple
or three or four years ago or something .
M: Yes sir. Well, they've done a lot of experimental work
up there, working with vets. And, well, I work with vets
MORGAN 10
M: myself and we do a lot of experimental work, but we
don't get the national publicity like he does. Or really
you might say international .. Because I 'm not as big as he
is, I don 't have a school . And we don't really care if we
get that kind of publicity or not. But they've taken
horses' legs off, at the knee or below the knee in the hock,
or at the hock or at the front lock(?) joint, and put a peg
leg on him, and make him go! With proper equipment and
harness, it's just like a person with an artificial leg.
L: Mmm-hm .
M: And this is some of the things that we've done in the
past, oh , ten years or so , that we wouldn't have done twenty
years ago--they would have just taken a horse out and shot
him! But we ' ve save a lot of highbred horses by doing this
kind of thing , and used 'em for breeding purposes. So we
prolong their--not only their lives, but also their
bloodline . And this is the reason we've done this .
L: ~IDm - hm, hm-hm. Now you're located down there in
Stockdale, by Denhawken. Where does most of your clientele
come from now? ' Cause after all, you know, old Cousin
Johnny Vinyard quit plowin' behind mules in 1942 and bought
himself a Farmall tractor, and a John Deere--first one he
ever owned , when he was sixty- two years old. To give you
a--
M: That's very true on all of it.
L: But, uh, where do you find your clientele now?
M: Well, I never really worry about it-- the clientele
finds me. Lot of the vets that I do work with, will either
MORGAN 11
M: call me if they have a special horse , a special job
needs to be done , or people ask them where they can get a
horseshoer--they usually r ecommend me and give them my
number, and so forth. I've never actively gone out looking
for clients, but there's no problem. Right now in this day
and age, there's more horses in the world and in this United
States than there was a hundred years ago . Now I know that
people don't use 'em--
L: More and more horses but not mules. (Laugh. )
M: We ll, there's more mules too and mules are mak i ng a big
comeback! They 're gettin' more popular!
L: Well I know that to be true.
M: That's a differnt subject altogether .
L : Yeah , I know-- I don 't want to ? (Laugh. )
M: Uh, mules , they're usin' them for dressage--I'm talking'
about mules. They ' re usin' 'em for hunter jumpers , they're
usin ' 'em for pack strings, of course we knew this-- they're
racing them-- and a good , fast racing mule will run the
socks off my quarter horse . And this is a fact. On a short
race they 'll run the socks off my quarter horse. I've shod
two or three good ones . I n fact, I was shoeing the national
winning racing champion mule , for about six years, of the
United States, and he was one thing-- something else. But he
was also the world champion kicker . I could stand up there
by his head and he could take my hat off with a hind
foot--they can kick in any direction.
L: Yes , they can.
MORGAN 12
M: But to get back to the horses-- people are riding horses
more than what they did fifty years ago , or twenty years
ago , or ten years ago . And you have your trail ride people;
and you have your people that, believe it or not, use horses
as a prestige thing .
L : Oh, yeah.
M: Just like a Cadillac or a Mark IV.
L: Yeah , or collecting paintings or something like that.
M: You bet. So this is where my clientele comes from.
L: You're not all that far from Goliad, and Goliad does
have a race track, doesn ' t it?
M: Goliad has a race track, and there is a race track in
Seguin, which I don't know if you knew about. There's a lot
of little brush country race tracks around that nobody's
supposed to know about--
L: (Laugh.) I even know about a dog- racing' track over
there , close to Belmont , south of Belmont, too .
M: We used to race in La Vernia, right there behind the
Chamber of Commerce hall. And they kinda closed that down
because it got to be too much of a hassle, too many people
drinkin' and gettin' in trouble over there, and everything,
so we kinda shut it down. But we've done some racin' over
there, in fact we've got two horses that raced the first, I
guess the first three years over there, and one of 'em was
only beat once. The other one never was beat . But they're
little match races , and l ittle country type races, you know,
brush track, and it ' s a lot of fun , but , you can get some
pretty stiff competition.
MORGAN 13
L: Now let ' s talk about competition, though, right there in
you own profession. Do you have a lot of competition? Are
there a lot of other farriers around? Is the profession
coming back , so to speak? Do you find many young people
getting into it these days?
M: Yes , we do have a lot of competition , and that ' s what
makes the thing--the improvements we've got to do, and
things we aren't doing . We have a Texas Professional
Farriers Association, or in short we call it the TPFA, and
we have listed 300 and I t hink 86 members in the state of
Texas in our association. Now these people we classify as
farriers, and not horseshoers. We probably have five times
as many horseshoers , which are not listed with us, and not
part of us, although they are in the profession .
L: Now I think I could probably figure out the difference
between a horseshoer and a farrier, but do you want to tell
me?
M: Yes, I'd love to tell you. A horseshoer i s anybody who
can take a set of tools--a hammer, an old rasp , or even a
new rasp, a pair of nippers, and nails, and go out and nail
some shoes on an old horse. Whether they're on right, or
not, it doesn't make any difference--he's still a
horseshoer . ' Cause he shoes horses. A farrier is-kinda
comparin' to him, well, he's a professional. And he takes
pride in his work . . He can make any shoe, or any leg brace,
or any modification that is required,to make the horse go
and to go right. He can take a crippled horse, and he can
work on him, and build whatever needs to be done, and help
MORGAN 14
M: the horse. Comparing a horseshoer and a farrier is like
compar i ng a general practitioner in the medical profession
to a podiatrist. So, the horseshoer knows what he's doin '
sometimes, sometimes he don't. And you've got some darn
good horseshoers. But they do not make--they still-- do
what they need to do at times.
L: If you're--along the r oad t o becoming a farrier , do
farriers-- tell me a little bit about their training that
they git up there at that school in Sperry, Oklahoma, for
example. What's the curriclum? What do they study? Do
they study horse anatomy--muscles, ligaments, you know,
things of this nature?
M: You'd study a lot on the feet and the legs of an animal,
and I mean thoroughly. You dissect the leg of a dead horse,
both front and rear, to see just exactly what that is made
up of , and all the muscles, and ligaments, tendons, and all,
are connected and interconnected, and all of the joints.
And you dig into that thing and you'll go through it, just
right to the very last thing. You learn everything about
that horse in his foot. But you also-­L:
You--oh, go ahead , go ahead.
M: You also study the overall anatomy of a horse. From his
head to his tail, and from the bottom of his feet t o the top
of his back. So you can balance him out, you can do
whatever you need to. Yes sir. You study every bit of him.
L: Did you have that kind of a thing yourself? I sorta
gather that you didn't.
M: I did not, no. I--
MORGAN 15
L: So actually you had a somewhat harder row to hoe, didn't
you, to get it down--
M: Yes, I did. Well--I'll put it this way--I did study
that, but I got mine when I was shoeing with this Bill
Thwaites , that I spoke of earlier, and reading from a
book--which you asked if a book had been written, and
there's been several of 'em, and I've studied several of
' em , I probably have the best libra ry on farriery in the
state of Texas.
L: Well , give me a couple of titles that you think are
right up there at the top.
M: All right, Doug Butler's Practical Horseshoeing. He was
a professor in the University of Missouri at one time, and I
believe he is now in Oregon teaching. And we have Bud
Beeston's Master Farrier. There's another one from out in
Tennessee, and he and his wife both teach horseshoeing as
well as doing horseshoeing, and I--his name is Canfield, I
want to say Dale or Dan Canfield. And their's is some of
the better ones that we've had to study. I' ve got seven or
eight other books, but right off the top of my head I
couldn't say which title went to which author. And I would
hate to get 'em tangled up.
L: Yeah, I understand. I may be taking you down a
sidetrack here, but did you ever read or have occasion to
look at Doc Green (?), Ben K. Green's book on horse
conformation?
M: (Laugh. ) Yes, I have. I didn't get a chance to read
it, I got a chance to glance through it. And I think he's-
MORGAN
M: he's a great author. He's real great.
L: He was a hell of a bullshit artist.
M: (Laugh.)
16
L: But I was wondering, you know what an experienced--what
an old pro like yourself would think of his ideas and
notions.
M: Well, I'll put it this way. I think his ideas and
nature--if you'll dissect what he's saying, and really take
all the, as you put it, bullshit, out of it, he is pretty
darn close to bein' just about right. But he's got a knack
of putting it where it is not only a real good technical
book, but it is a fascinating book t o read. Now I didn't
get to read the whole thing, like I said, but I'm goin' to
one of these days. What I have read, it just tickles you,
and really makes it interesting. He kinda reminds me
of--the same type of writing is done by another vet, from
over in Scotland, I believe it was, the author of-- All
Animals (Creatures] Large and Small?
L: Yeah--Herriot, wasn't it?
M: Herriot, yes.
L: James He rriot. And he's written several books. And he's
got the knack of really makin' a book interesting and
really, I hate to set it down.
L: Mmm-hmm. I think probably one of the greatest of the
authors on animal life and on, you know, reacting toward
animals as having personalities of their own, which of
course many of them do, is a British zoologist named Gerald
Durrell, and if you ever have a chance to read any of his
MORGAN
L: books, they're wonderful, and they're well -written,
tremendously good humor in it, and just thoroughly
enjoyable, whether you're interested in animals or not.
M: Great . Great. Oh, I love to read. I'd sooner read
than I would watch TV--
L: Oh, my--yeah , myself.
M: --Unless we have some special I like, like we 're
puttin' on here.
L: Right.
M: I like good western music , or good band music , or
something like that, or a real good , live type wildlife
show, or something like this.
L: Well , do you--how much association , you know , do you
have with other farriers in the state? Texas is a big
state. But, you know , how many far riers are we talking
about within the state of TExas?
M: Actual farriers?
L: Farriers , and not horseshoers, and of course 1-­M:
Actual farriers in the state--I would say there's
probably pretty close to 600.
L: How many were there ten years ago?
M: Te n years ago? Probably 200, at the most.
L: Well I'll be damn . Would you hazard to guess about
twenty years ago?
M: Twenty years ago I'd probably say there was not more
than twenty-five in the whole state.
L: Okay , so--
17
t10RGAN 18
M: We have really upgraded--this is one reason why we
formed our association . Now the horseshoers have probably
stayed at the same level for the past twenty years, as far
as numbers go. Because you're gonna have horseshoers--and
some will shoe ' em for a while and then they'll quit.
They'll find out how hard it is, you know. It looks easy
when you see someone else doin' it. But he gets out there
and gets under a horse , he finds out --hey , that old horse is
a heavy rascal when he wants to l ay on you, and he can be a
fractious outfit , too, you know. So, you can get hurt,
really easy,real quick , and you can get tired out and mad
quicker than that. So they figure that is an easy way to
make a living. But I feel this way , and a lot of us do ,
that whatever you enjoy doin', I don't care what it is, it's
not hard. You know. If you enjoy doing it. But we got
together and formed our assoc iation , and we upgraded a l ot
of good plain common horseshoers, and a lot of kids that was
wantin' to get started, we've taken them before they
developed any bad habits, and we've taught them the proper
way of doing things. And by doing this--by getting
together--now, we usually get together about once every
month or every two months, most of us in the state. Now we
don't all get together at the same time, there's no way.
We've got people in Lubbock, Texas, and Amarillo, and all
the way around the state. We do manage to try--a bunch of
us get together and have an association meeting about once a
month.
MORGAN 19
L: Where do you f ind the biggest concentration of farriers
in the state of Texas? Or are they just evenly distributed?
M: No, they're not real evenly distributed . Now you find
concentrations around every large city in the state, like
here in San Antonio. Here in San Antonio, I believe we--at
last count , there's about twenty to twenty-five farriers and
probably a hundred and fifty horseshoers, right here in the
San Antonio area.
L: But they're not out--they're not out in the country,
they're here--
M: Now those are in the cities where you have your big
stables. Where you can go and make one set up, and do
anywheres from five to fifteen horses a day, and you don't
have to drive allover the countr y to do it. And most of
' ern are located around large cities where they do have these
stables where the horses are concentrated. Now I bought(?)
out there in the country before I started shoein' horses,
and I ? in the same thing. But I used to
drive there, I covered--ten years ago. I (used to drive?)
the horses all the way from Corpus Christi to Austin , and
from Victoria all the way to Uvalde. Now we didn ' t have
enough horseshoers to cover those areas, which we do now.
So this area I covered when I was young. I was on the road
an awful l ot. Then I decided, well, it really is not worth
my time to be on the road that much, when I can make a
livin' right there around horne, and do just as good. And
doing better , really. I don't like to spend many nights on
the road, or anything like this.
MORGAN 20
L: Sure .
M: But we have got these other farriers , and a lot of the
horseshoers , are learning too. And the larger cities has a
big concentration, but the small towns-usually, well, the
closest competition as far as real competition t o me
goes--I've got one in Floresville nineteen miles away . I
have another one in Yorktown that's thirty-three miles away,
and there's another one over in Leesville which is a small
little community like Denhawken--
L: I know exacty where Leesville is.
M: Well , like I say , it's a little small community about
like Denhawken. And that's my closest competition . And in
between each of those people and me , there's probably three
hundred horses in each direction between me and them. And I
don 't try to do three hundred horses a month, or every six
weeks , which is what you should do, is every six weeks .
'Cause I can't handle that many.
tnat many.
I don't want to handle
L: You're going to inevitably learn a hell of a lot of
animal psychology and you're gonna learn it quick, when
you're--
M: Either that or you 'll quit.
L: You'll quit, or you gonna wind up, you know, with l ots
of broken bones. What kind of animal--I'm not sure this
question's gonna work but I'll try it anyway--what kind of
anima l have you learned to recognize as being one that's
gonna give you trouble, you know, almost the instant you
spot him?
MORGAN 21
M: Well , suprisingly, you can tell which animals are gonna
give you the trouble ninety-eight percent of the time. Now
sometimes you can get fooled .
L: Yeah , yeah.
M: But-it' s just t he way he stands. He stands kinda like
he ' s on guard or something. You yourself have walked up to
a dog a nd known that that dog , if he had a chance, is gonna
get ya. Just the way he stands and the way he watches ya.
And a horse is the same way. He's gonna get ya if he gits a
chance. And you just learn to recognize the sign language
that he puts out . ' Cause he's tellin' ya, even though he's
not sayin' anyth ing and not making any overt moves , just the
way he stands there and watches you lets you know that ,
hey , you better be real careful , and he ' ll get ya if he can.
So exactly how to put it in words , I don't really know,
except just watch 'em.
And they'll git ya.
' Cause he's gonna be watchin ' you!
L: You referred a litt l e bit ago to , you know, the proper
positioning of the shoe, you know, for therapeutic--you
know , similar you ' re mounting a shoe for say, some
therapeutic purpose , or corrective purpose , or whatever.
Does the reaction of the animal then tell you whether or not
you 're doing it right as you proceed with the operation?
M: Well . the action's before . You study a horse in his
different modes of travel and the way he stands, before you
ever start to work. Now in the field, i f you're just out
shoeing a horse, normally somebody will lead him to ya, and
after you've shod several hundred of 'em, you can see what
MORGAN 22
M: you think might be needed. Now he may need something
different. It's--sometimes, in a way it 's a trial and error
thing to get it exactly right . But--
L: That doesn 't help the horse's disposition or yours to
have to--
M: Well , yes, it does , because a lot of horses--the way you
approach 'ern and everything--Now, I can say this truthfully,
and maybe I'm being ' a little bit proud , but I think
rightfully so, but I have shod horses that some of the
horseshoers or farriers couldn't even walk up to. And had
no trouble with 'ern. So the way you approach ' ern , is--to-­just,
a whole lot of the old thing, as far as that goes , but
also knowing what you 're going to do , beforehand . If he's
walkin', now, just for example , if you watched a horse
walk--now we call it ringin' or paddlin'--they pick a foot
up and it'll swing to the outside , and kinda swing in a
circle, and then set it down. Where instead of breakin'
straight forward, over the toe and moving in a straight
line--well, this is paddling. Well, you 've got to correct
it. And this is why I say, it's a trial and error thing to
correct this, because what works on one won't work on the
next one, maybe. And you've got to be able to adjust the
way the shoe fits. You might even have to make a
side-weighted shoe , special, to transfer the weight on one
side of his foot or the other. And what works on the hind
foot works on the opposite side on the front foot ,
sometimes. But you know where you're goin', and what you
want to do, but it's a kind of a trial and error thing to
MORGAN 23
M: make sure that it is doing exactly what you need for it
to do .
L: One very important question that I forgot to ask here , a
few minutes ago . Does every farrier routinely make his own
shoes from scratch, so to speak , or does he buy those that
are pre - cast , or whatever the term is?
M: Well , this kinda depends on your cl i entele also. Most of
us use what they call a factory keg(?) shoe . The reason
being , that we do have to cha r ge more for handmade shoes ,
because it takes a longer time, and you ' ve got a whole lot
more-not only effort , but also money t i ed up, in your-well
we use gas forges , or we 'l l use coa l forges , and you got
more money tied up i n your equiment . It takes special
equipment . So we do have to charge more , and it does take
more time , although they get a better fin ished product . And
a l ot of people can 't understand t h is, and they say , "Well ,
good lord, you- you're chargin ' too much." Wh i ch I can
understand this, t oo , I 've been on both sides . And most of
us do most of our shoeing with keg shoes . We do all of our
therapeutic shoeing with handmade shoes , handmade braces . I
shoe all my own horses , and we have nine of them , with all
handmade shoes .
(Laugh. )
L: Mm- hmm .
So , we got some horses with problems too.
M: Almost every horse you ' ll come across will have some
kind of a problem that a handmade shoe can improve him.
Almost all of them. There ' s no perfec t foot on a horse.
MORGAN 24
M: So, consequently that's why you put shoes on--if you had
a perfect foot, you wouldn't have to put shoes on 'em.
L: Yeah. I was thinkin' they probably spent a lot of time
on some mighty rough terrain, perhaps.
M: Well, if it's mighty rough, they're gonna break their
feet down, and still it's not a perfect foot. So, it'll
wear it out and break it off, and chip and split. So still
it's not a perfect foot. About the nearest thing I could
say to a perfect foot any horse ever had, and this is only
my opinion and several other people I've talked to, quite a
few of 'em horseshoers--is the old . line of the original
Appaloosa horses. They had the toughest feet in the world.
And they wore like iron. And that's one reason why the
Indians didn't have t o shoe their horses very much. They
just had a tougher foot.
L: Okay. Frances Haynes(sp?) many years ago wrote a book
on the Appaloosa, published by University of Oklahoma, sort
of a classic reference in its field. One of these days I'll
have to get that book and read it and see if he alludes to
this.
M: (Laugh.)
L: Professor Hayes might have, you know, might have missed
something there. How many of these Folklife Festivals have
you participated in?
M: This is my fifth one.
L: Your fifth one.
M: Yes sir. And I've enjoyed each one of 'em more every
year. I'll be here as long as ya'll have me back. (Laugh.)
MORGAN 25
L: (Laugh .) Well, that might be quite a while--you seem to
draw a crowd out there.
M: Well, we certainly try, we try to put on a demonstration
that people can see what we're doing , and they can
understand and see what their grandfathers or uncles or
daddies or--some people-- almost all people had a blacksmith
somewhere down the line in the family , when you hear 'em
talkin!
L: That's right.
M: But they are all interested, and we do try to put on a
real good demonstration for them. The people I've got with
me and have had with me are some of the best blacksmiths in
the state, artistic-wise and utility-wise , and they 're kinda
new to the game of demonstration in public and doin' a lot
of talking, which--I 've got one whose a real bullshit
artist, and this is great--he's a good blacksmith.
L: (Laugh . ) I think I know--I think I met him .
M: Yes, that was John Robie(sp.?) down there. And he is
real good--he ' s a good blacksmith. But he just has a gi ft
of gab--and this is part of demonstratin '--i f you don't have
it, you can get out there an ' hammer all day long, if you
don't say nothing, you know, you're not gonna have much
people there to--
L: You're not gonna have any feedback, no response.
M: Right.
L: Where are these other folks from, that are with your
group?
M: John Robie(sp .?) is here locally. He works for Voss Metal
MORGAN 26
M: Works , in t he south part of San Antonio . Mike ?
is out here. In Converse , has his own b lacksmith shop and
works full time in it. Norma Clark , the lady blacksmith, is
up in Spring Branch. And she is actually a lady farrier, or
a lady horseshoer , whichever you want t o call here--she
calls herself a horseshoer, I'd say she's a farrier. She is
a good horseshoer and farrier. She's not as good as some of
'em but then, hey, she's a lady. I wouldn't compare her
work with mine, no. Or with anybody else that I classify as
a top line farrier. But she is above the horseshoer level,
and she's right in the , what I would call, the intermediate
range of the farrier class. So, that's what I call her. I
have another man out here who came in this evening , Gary
Fields. Now he is a CPA out here at Kelly Field for the
commissary . And he does a lot of part-time blacksmithing at
home, and he's more or less just trying to learn. I have
several other people that do come in and out of my booth
almost every year , that--they 're horseshoers , and do a
little blacksmithin' out--hobby type stuff, and they come in
to learn and to visit and to have a good time and get in my
fire, and just enjoy themselves. This what I call part of
the demonstrating, is getting them in the fire too and l et
them do somethig.
L: Right. Right.
M: So that's why I do have some of the people I've got
here . Now something that most people don't know and I found
out here yesterday, Mike Jacik(sp . ?) right there where we ' re
working--that big pecan tree, right out, just outside the
MORGAN
M: fence-­L:
Mm-hmm.
27
M: That pecan tree was one he played on when he was a kid
growing up. It was in his mother's backyard--grandmother's
backyard! And so , this has a big significance for him.
L: (Laugh.) Mm-hmm.
M: Several years ago he was not a blacksmith but he was a
metalworker, and he came in and I got him in the fire, and
he took a vacation that year and he went to New Mexico. And
he went to Frank Turley's forge in New Mexico and learned to
be a blacksmith.
L: Okay , I know about Frank Turley , and a friend of mine
named Marc Simmons , who is himself a farrier out in
Cerrillos, New Mexico- - wrote a book with Frank Turley here a
couple years ago , four or five years ago--
M: ' Bout five years ago .
L: --Published by University of New Mexico- - by the Museum
of--it' s the--why am I having memory failure here? The
Museum of New Mexico.
11: Santa Fe, New Mexico.
L: Santa Fe, yeah. Turley and Marc Simmons collaborated on
this book. And
M: They've got a fine book out. Marc-­L
: Yeah , I've got it.
M: You have it? You must be fortunate . I couldn't get one.
L: Yes, it's out of print. Now I think maybe they've got
it in paperback . But I obviously get the hardback.
Simmons is a very unusual man . Ph.D. in history, I believe
MORGAN 28
L : from the University of Texas , teaches at the Un i versity
of New Mexi co- -uh , has wr i tten fourteen or fifteen books on,
you know , everything from the Spanish Colonial government of
New Mexico in the seventeenth century , to books about , you
know- -
M: Farrier y .
L : Farriery .
M: Blacksmithing .
L : Okay . All right, I was wondering- -
M: How much more diversified can you get?
L : I was wondering what the word was. Farriery .
M: Yes .
L: Thought sure it couldn ' t be " farriering".
M: (Laugh.) What word is that? It ' s your words, your
voice. (Laugh. ) You say what you want .
L: ( Laugh . ) Well , "ferrying ", though , is what George
Washington did across the Delaware .
M: but I--you know , talking of such (a thi ng?) like this, a
few years ago-- Now we had a little ole newspaper that goes
(with the) American Farrier ' s Assoc i ation, which was, (so
happened?)national--and we ' re going international , by the
way--but we had a little magazine , or a little paper out,
and they would ask a sixth grade class in California , of
kids, "What is a farrier? "
L: Laugh .
M: Well , here are some of the answers .
male fairy."
"A farrier is a
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